


Principles of Persuasion

by jouissant



Category: Life (TV), Standoff
Genre: M/M, World War II, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5498447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Matt Flannery heard Charlie Crews’s name, he was in Normandy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Principles of Persuasion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dancinguniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/gifts).



> This is probably only nominally a Band of Brothers fic, but I just couldn't resist putting these guys in the canon setting. This is also the result of my musing that, if Charlie Crews was going to be a BoB character, he might be a little more Speirs than Winters. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The first time Matt Flannery heard Charlie Crews’s name, he was in Normandy. He was hitching a ride from the beachhead to Sainte-Mère-Église with a couple of gossipy MPs, and he was pretending to be asleep. 

“I heard,” one MP said, “that he shot one of his own guys for drinking back in England. Looked him dead in the eye and shot him in the guts, just like that.” 

“Well, I heard,” said the other, “that he did twelve years in the California State Pen before he joined the service—took out a whole family.” 

“Yeah, I heard that too.”

“I heard once he got out he joined up right away—figured it was easier to dodge his parole in Hitler’s back yard, right? By the time the brass found him out, he’d made looie, and they figured he was too good at killing Germans to do anything about it.” 

“Well, I heard he’s a millionaire,” said the first MP. “He’s in good with the mob back in Los Angeles. That’s where he’s from, you know, Los Angeles. That’s how he got out of the pen. They pulled some strings, got the case reopened and hired some lady lawyer fresh out of Radcliffe to represent him. Real flashy, you know? Front page of all the papers. I heard they’re making a movie out of it, gonna get Gene Tierney to play the lawyer.” 

“Say, how’re you so up on all this, Johnny?” 

“I’m from Pasadena. I told you, front page of all the papers.” 

“Wait a second,” Matt said, sitting up. “That doesn’t figure. If he got off, why’d he have to skip out on his parole?” 

The MPs jumped a foot in the air each. They clammed up quick and Matt sat in the back of the jeep and snickered all the way to the CP. Truth be told, though, he was a little disappointed. It served them right for spreading rumors about a superior officer, but that didn’t mean Matt hadn’t been interested. 

***

Matt didn’t actually set eyes on Lieutenant Crews until a few weeks later, by which point he’d nearly forgotten all about the man and whatever it was he was supposed to have done. He was plenty busy—war had a way of eating up a man’s time, as it turned out, and the invasion had left the intelligence service with an awful lot to sift through in the wake of the retreating German army. They were headquartered in a not-unpleasant little cottage in a not-unpleasant little town. _Les Normands_ were grateful enough to the invasion force to keep their wine cellars open and to scare up all kinds of delicacies Matt had thought long lost to rationing. All in all, it was a more civilized wartime existence than a man petrified of change could have dared hope for, though if you looked off in the right direction you could see the sky hazy with smoke, hear the distant crump of mortars. 

He was reading through a fat stack of paperwork—interrogation transcripts, blueprints that might or might not detail some _chateau_ -cum-Nazi stronghold—when he heard a commotion from outside. 

“Lieutenant Flannery, sir?” Sergeant Rogers stuck his head around the door to Matt’s office.

“What’s going on, Frank?” 

“We’ve got business, sir. Crop of Kraut deserters someone flushed out of the woods. Hope your German’s not too rusty.” 

Matt pushed the chair back from his desk. “Yeah, let’s hope.” 

He came out into the bright morning to see a patrol before him on the road. Half a dozen men—paratroopers, by the eagles and the jump wings—and five German prisoners, bedraggled and wan. They looked as if they’d spent the last fortnight living in a hedgerow, which turned out not to be so far from the truth. 

“Found ‘em outside Carentan,” said one of the troopers. “Camping in a—what’d you call it, Lieutenant Crews?” 

“A dell,” said the man he’d spoken to. “They were camping in a dell.” 

He turned and nodded at Matt, and just like that the name registered, and something inside Matt leapt to attention. Lieutenant Crews took off his helmet and squinted into the sunlight. His red hair was matted with sweat, and his eyes were the color of water. He was lanky and clean cut. He was not at all what Matt had pictured. 

“A dell?” Matt repeated. “Like where elves and fairies live?” The paratroops snorted with laughter. 

“Exactly,” Crews said, looking pleased. “You ever hear about fairy rings?” 

“Pardon?” 

“It’s how mushrooms grow,” said Crews. “Spores get seeded underground and grow out from the center, then the center dies off and _voila_ , you get a ring. Looks kinda magical. Anyway, the center can’t hold. Yeats. I like that, don’t you?” 

“Sure,” Matt said, for lack of anything better. “Well, I guess we’d better get these guys inside. Thanks for your help, Lieutenant.” 

“Any time,” said Crews. “And you are?” 

“Oh,” said Matt. “Yeah. Lieutenant Flannery. Intelligence service.” 

Crews held out a hand. Matt shook it, feeling pinned under the other man’s searching look. “You going to interrogate them?” Crews asked. 

“That’s the plan,” Matt said. 

“Great,” said Crews. “Where are we headed?” 

Matt looked askance at him. Part of him was ready to mouth off—this was no superior, after all, and here he was stealing Matt’s show. But the rest of him—well, there was something about this guy, wasn’t there? Enough to get the MPs buzzing all the way back to D-Day. 

“You oughta let him help,” muttered a slight, dark-eyed sergeant at Matt’s elbow. REESE, said the tape on his jacket. 

“Yeah?” said Matt. Across from them Crews was fiddling with his musette bag, oblivious. 

“Yeah. He’ll be a royal pain in your ass, but there’s something about him makes ‘em sing like canaries.” 

“Huh,” Matt said. “He speak German?” 

“Fluent. No idea where he learned it, but there you go.” 

“Okay,” Matt said. 

Reese nodded and slipped back among the men, clustered as they were around the prisoners. The Germans looked impossibly young, Matt thought. But not Crews. Crews looked older. 

***  
That first lot of prisoners wasn’t the last time Matt saw Crews—far from it. As it happened, Crews was good at bringing prisoners in and Matt was good at interrogating them. Crews was too, though; Reese hadn’t been wrong about that, or about the fact that Crews was a massive pain in the ass, always on about fairy rings or Jean-Paul Sartre or the nature of reality, sometimes all at once. And sometimes in the middle of working a man over, which Matt expected to be a mess but which was, in fact, surprisingly effective. 

“Look at you,” Crews said to a baby _Wehrmacht_ NCO. “Can you tell me honestly you’re really here?” He said it with such exquisite sympathy that the man began to cry, just broke right there in the middle of the room, and before Matt knew what was happening the prisoner was offering up troop allotments in between giving Crews variations on his mama’s top secret strudel recipe. Crews was, to put it mildly, impressive.

“How do you do it?” Matt asked him afterwards, not feeling entirely friendly. He’d just gone a full month without the barest squeak of a prisoner, and with Regiment breathing down his neck every minute of the day. And now Crews and his company were back with the spoils of war and a cracking interrogator to boot. Since the latter was actually supposed to be Matt, he thought he could be forgiven for feeling the slightest bit put out. 

Crews shrugged. They’d abandoned the basement of HQ for the rather more welcoming environs of Matt’s billet, where he’d broken out a fresh bottle of much-coveted American whiskey and offered it up to his erstwhile acquaintance, because he was just that kind of a guy. 

“This is good,” Crews said, staring into his glass. “We don’t have much in the way of provisions out on the line.” Some men might have meant that accusatorially, but Matt got the impression that from Crews it was simply an observation. The man had lit on a bowl of wormy apples like they were a lifetime supply of Hershey bars.

“I have my sources.” 

“You’ve got a girl back home? Or over in England, maybe. Lots of the boys’ve got a girl over in England.” 

Matt shook his head. “She’s not my girl,” he said. “What about you, you got a girl?” 

“No,” Crews said. “No girl.” 

Matt took a gulp of his drink. “What, she send you a Dear John letter? She should talk to my not-girl; now _that_ was a letter.” 

“No girl,” Crews said, and the look on his face made Matt drink up faster. 

When he was good and sauced Matt tried again. “How do you do it? Talk to them that way. I mean, I’ve got training, Crews. You want to know how much dough the Military Intelligence Service sunk into teaching me how to milk every last drop of talk out of a prisoner?” 

Crews shrugged. “Have you ever been one?” 

***  
The next prisoner Crews dug up was just as crazy as he was, and Crews ended up with a P38 across the face for his troubles before all was said and done. 

“D’you think it tastes different getting pistol-whipped with a Luger? I bet it tastes different. Different gun grease. I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” 

“Next time,” Matt said as he daubed antiseptic on Crews’s busted lip, “We’re tying them to the chair.” 

“It works better if you don’t tie them up,” Crews said. “Haven’t you got a medic?” 

“What do we need a medic for? This is free France, goddammit. Now sit down and let me finish cleaning you up.” 

***

“Are you ever going to tell me the truth?” 

Crews blinked at him over the desk. His hair was very red, Matt thought. Very, very red. “Are you ever going to freshen my drink, Lieutenant Flannery?” Crews asked. 

“You,” Matt said, “Are letting me ply you with booze. But honestly, Crews. Charlie. You’ve got to know the sorts of things they say about you.” 

He freshened both of their drinks, though, just because. 

Crews yawned. It was getting on for three in the morning. They were heading out for the line at 0800, both of them, Matt leaving behind his cozy billet and pressing into Germany, Crews and his men leaping into dangers untold but easily imagined. At any rate, neither of them would be sniffing around Regiment together much longer. Matt was more broken up about it than he cared to admit. 

He had the uncanny habit of reading between the lines of the people he met, picking out their marginalia and committing it to memory. It was part of what made him good at his job, but in this war it had the unwelcome side affect of—of making him think of people when he shouldn’t, when they were only acquaintances, only warm bodies he might see once, twice, three times, have a chat or a drink with before they moved on. It would be wonderful, Matt thought, if he were better at moving on. 

“Tell me a secret,” said Crews. 

“I’m terrified of dogs.”

Crews laughed, his face soft with fatigue. 

“Tell _me_ a secret,” said Matt. His heart was suddenly beating very quickly.

Crews got up from the camp chair he sat in. He walked around the desk and leaned down over Matt, and then he kissed him. Matt scrambled up out of his chair and Crews took a step back to accommodate him, the shift in position enough to leave them both swaying on their feet, clutching at one another for purchase. 

“Okay,” Matt said. “That’s—that’s a pretty good secret.” 

“I think you’re telling me another one,” Crews said, letting his hands drift down to Matt’s hips, pressing their bodies close together. 

“I’m not saying a thing,” Matt said. “Resisting counter-interrogation. I can do that, Crews.” 

“You know what, Flannery?” 

“What?” 

“You know my sergeant never lets me drive? I’m the ranking officer; I ought to drive. I ought to do anything I want. All I want to do is drive, but he never lets me drive.” 

“That’s a shame,” Matt said, even though this was just the sort of thing Crews said to baby-faced POWs. “That’s a real shame.” Crews was kissing his neck, and it was making Matt squirm against him. 

“Do you think I might be a bad driver?” Crews had insuinuated his thigh between both of Matt’s, and there was nothing for it but to grind down. It was a very muscular thigh. They probably ran a lot in the paratroops; Matt could picture Crews setting to like a thoroughbred, charging up a hill. 

“I’m sure you’re a fine driver.” 

“I’m starting to think I might be a bad driver.” 

“Let’s stop talking about your driving,” Matt said, and for once Crews shut his mouth.


End file.
